Wednesday, 11 January 2017

With the offensive in Mosul, Iraq intensifying, humanitarian
groups are voicing concerns about the fate of tens of thousands people
stranded there. The president of the Red Cross told RT about the
challenges of those helping the refugees of the conflict.

Saying that “the humanitarian situation for those who have been displaced by the conflict is difficult in many respects,”
President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Peter
Maurer told RT that the conditions are dire for both those already in
the refugee camps and refugees who have just been forced from their
homes by the fighting.

“[People] have been living in camps for two or three months now
and, despite all the efforts of responding with water, health, food and
shelter services, the situation in the camps is not easy, and people are
eager to return back. At the same time, we see more displaced
population coming out of Mosul from the fighting,” Maurer said, speaking to RT from Erbil, an Iraqi city near Mosul.
Earlier
this week, the Red Cross reported that over 25,000 people have been
forced to take shelter at a refugee camp since the conflict forced them
from their homes, and thousands more in the area are still under threat.
“We
actually see a triple challenge. We see displacements that are
continuing because of the fighting in Mosul and therefore we have to
scale-up our humanitarian response. We see those who have been in camps
for two or three months and we need to continue to assist and protect
them... We also need to back-up those who continue to be residents,” the Red Cross head said.

“The biggest challenge in Mosul at the present moment is the
protection of the civilian population, which is in the city and partly
exposed to the ongoing warfare,” he stressed.

Maurer described how, while visiting areas “at the front doors of Mosul,” he had witnessed “a lot of abandoned and destroyed villages,” noting that “it
will take a lot of time to reconstruct those villages, to decontaminate
the area from mines and unexploded ordnances, and to bring back normal
life to people.”

However, it’s not only civilians who are under constant threat in both Iraq and Syria, the ICRC president acknowledged.
“I
must say that I have to appreciate the efforts which have been taken by
the Kurdish Peshmerga, by the Iraqi government to ensure that
civilians, civilian infrastructure and medical facilities are protected.
But of course this is not necessarily the case on all sides of the
frontlines,” he said, adding that medical workers do not always enjoy safety and respect.
Commenting
on an incident in which two medics in Syria were killed in December
when a Russian mobile hospital in Aleppo was bombed by rebels, the Red
Cross chief said that his organization felt “sorry and expressed condolences” to the Russian personnel that had suffered in the attack.

“Our
position has been clear in principle, whether it is in Syria [or] in
any other place of the world – medical facilities in conflict absolutely
need to be protected. Of course we condemn many attacks on medical
facilities, wherever they happen. It is essential that doctors and
medical facilities can operate in conflict, and can protect people and
assist with medical services in a neutral and impartial way,” Maurer told RT.
On
Tuesday, the UN’s humanitarian aid agency, the Office for the
Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), announced that some 1,000
people per day fled the fighting in Mosul last week.
Since the
beginning of operation against Islamic State (formerly ISIS/ISIL) in
October of last year, some 135,000 people have fled the Iraqi city, OCHA
spokesman Jens Laerke told reporters, adding that the UN agency and its
partners have no access to or information about some areas in Mosul
that are controlled by the jihadists. There are “increasing humanitarian concerns for the wellbeing of civilians in these areas,” he said, as quoted by AP.